Columbus City Council gets first look at council restructuring

A summary of the proposed Columbus City Charter amendment that could allow voters to elect a new, expanded City Council in 2021 was formally presented Monday night to current city council members.

While the council voted to table action on the first reading, the summary gives the first indication to date on how the city would transition from a seven-member council, where every member is elected at-large, to a nine-member council, where candidates live in defined districts but elections are still held citywide.

The council must vote before the end of July for the plan to go before voters on the November ballot. Proposed charter changes were born out of a charter review committee that Councilman Shannon G. Hardin and Mayor Andrew J. Ginther appointed about a year ago.

“What we’re really talking about here at council is should we put the charter review committee’s recommendations before the public,” said Hardin, who sponsored the legislation along with council President Zach M. Klein. "The committee had two goals: How can we make city government more transparent and more accountable?"

The summary proposes that council would remain on its current track until Dec. 21, 2021, its last meeting of that year. All nine seats would then be up for election in 2021.

The city clerk would draw lots to divide the districts into two groups at the council’s first meeting in 2022. Members from five districts would serve an initial two-year term. The other four members would serve a four-year term. Under the current proposal, district boundaries would be drawn by a five-person commission that would submit at least three plans to the council. Council then would adopt one of the plans.

The council would appoint four of the commission’s members, and it would jointly appoint a fifth member with the mayor. Council staff originally recommended that the council appoint two members, the mayor appoint two members and that they would jointly appoint one member.

The committee was formed as an outside group tried to change the city charter to divide the city into districts and elect members from each district to an expanded council. Columbus voters overwhelmingly rejected the plan at a special election in August 2016 amid low voter turnout and a campaign against it by the Franklin County Democratic Party. Every elected officeholder in City Hall is a Democrat.

"The biggest thing that we heard throughout the committee’s review process and in the overwhelming defeat of the last ballot initiative was that we don’t want to be divided up and we don’t want to just vote based on district. We want to vote at-large," Hardin said.

Also at its Monday night meeting, the council voted to spend $17.1 million to expand 1.28 miles of Alum Creek Drive on the Southeast Side from two lanes to five, with a two-way center turn lane from Performance Way to Integrity Drive North. The bridge deck over Route 104 also will be replaced as part of the project, awarded to low bidder Shelly and Sands Inc.

"We put in a small fraction out of the $17 million," said Councilman Hardin, who serves as the Public Service and Transportation Committee chairman.

Roughly $2.9 million will come from city bond funds; another $13.7 million from the Ohio Department of Transportation; and nearly $500,000 from the Ohio Public Works Commission will pay for construction, construction administration and inspection services.

The City Council also approved a new contract with the union that represents about 53 city employees, including crime analysts, police evidence technicians and forensic scientists. The three-year agreement with the Ohio Labor Council, in effect until June 15, 2020, includes a 3 percent yearly wage increase for all OLC employees and an increase in the share that employees hired after Sept. 1 would pay for their health-insurance premiums. The total cost to the city would be $796,004.

The new contract would be a slight step up from the city's contract with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 1632, which implemented 3 percent wage increases for 2017 and 2018, and a 2 percent increase in 2019.